


Distant, and hard to love

by Lilliburlero



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: 1850s, Alternate Universe - Some People Live, Christian Character, Diary/Journal, Gen, Imperialism, M/M, POV First Person, POV Outsider, Pastiche, Period Typical Attitudes, Period-Typical Racism, Period-Typical Sexism, Post-Canon, Social Embarrassment, Stealth Crossover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-27
Updated: 2019-05-27
Packaged: 2020-03-19 22:36:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18979726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilliburlero/pseuds/Lilliburlero
Summary: Two unusual persons come to reside in Richard Amies' sleepy country parish, and cause something of a stir.





	Distant, and hard to love

27th July

Mrs Parrott tells me The Limes is let at last, to two retired naval officers, unmarried gentlemen in middle life. The distaff side of the parish is quite a-twitter, which dear old Poll deprecates in most thoroughgoing terms. It is a very great thing that we have a Navy, and God bless our tars, but she cannot conceive the circumstances which would induce a respectable woman to wed with one of ‘em, being uniformly men of fixed habits and uncertain character.

I ventured that long periods spent at close quarters with one’s fellow men are apt to foster a certain courtesy, indeed a delicacy of disposition, or so I had found in my little experience of mariners, which is by no means confined to the officer class. Their reputation for riot is based upon inadequate observation, an extrapolation of the most boisterous shore leaves to the general—

‘They are not tractable, Mr Amies!’ she exclaims, and then, unsettled at her own strength of feeling on the point (I wonder what is the tale that hangs thereby?) favoured me with an especially intricate account of the progress of our greengages. Tout est pour le mieux, &c.

* * *

3rd August

Morning: 76 souls, 40 f, 36 m Afternoon: 38, 31 f, 7 m

Preached upon 1 Cor. xvi:15 at both services—w/ the Spirit’ (22 mins) ‘w/ the Understanding’ (19 mins) to somewhat grudging appreciation. Salcomb, the JP, says my sermons have too many pretty things in ‘em, and are too short, the people do not feel edified unless their tailbones have been tried a little. Capt. Rawdon and Capt. Bowe-Lyon of The Limes not in attendance, though they are in residence. No doubt, fatigued by their removals, they chose on this, their first Sunday in the place, to ‘rig church’ for themselves, or so said I to every widow, spinster and doting mama between here and Yetland Cove, until I had quite sickened myself with the maritime pleasantry. It seems Capt. Rawdon, the elder, is an Irishman with a perceptible brogue, and so I was ardently solicited for reassurance that he is neither Papist nor Dissenter, which I found curiously distasteful to give, tho’ I spoke honest enough: he could scarce have ‘got his step’ were he the former, and the latter too would come some disrecommendation.

Oh, I cannot quite acquit myself of the charge of envy, that my own coming here did not provoke such a stir! And what a low, doggish envy, that has no substance but the desire for attention and admiration, for more than smiles and easeful conversation I surely do not wish from the Sex, and oh! no more wretched Berlin Work. Perchance the Avalanche of footstools, firescreens, slippers and caps might be diverted to The Limes—

* * *

5th August

Called upon The Limes, not at home. The foolish mendacity of the conventional phrase always strikes the caller with renewed force when a domestic altercation is audible from the threshold. I am still uncertain whether, in pausing upon the steps after the footman had closed the door, I was satisfying my commission to curacy of souls or an unhealthy curiosity, but in any case the terms of the disputation were not comprehensible. Some of the words articulated seemed not to be English, nor indeed any recognizable language.

Mrs Parrott reports they have roused the ire of the village by bringing all their servants with them, and hiring none, but this is entire customary for naval households, that often give employment to a ship’s people who are retired or invalided from the Service. I recall the tattooed, earringed and pigtailed ruffians that served one such in the village of my boyhood, a Captain Aubrey: outlandish in appearance, and very horrible in their language, but nonpareil in efficiency and tact; the brass at Woolcombe was polished to a standard I believe unattainable by the hand of Woman—

‘I think you are romantic about sailors, Mr Amies,’ she says darkly, adding with a conscious appearance of fairness, ‘Gentlemen often are.’

‘And you prejudiced against ‘em!’ But she would not be drawn, and engaged me upon the matter of the accounts for the chancel repairs. God send every clergyman such an arithmetically-inclined housekeeper, but not yet.

* * *

10th August

Morning: 56 souls, 31 f, 25 m Afternoon: 29, 22 f, 7 m

Preached upon Luke xvii:17 (a.m., 18 mins) and Ps. 84 (p.m., 32 mins by my half-hunter, interruption when a Slow-worm, believed to be the familiar of one Jimmy Tappertow, 9 y.o., was found to have obtained ingress to the younger Mrs Coulthard’s skirts, accounting for 11 mins. Malefactor turned over to the secular arm of J.Z. Tappertow, carter and carrier, for punishment, with some regret, for it is an arm in circumference and hardness something akin to the boughs of the churchyard yew). Gentlemen of The Limes absent. But this time not a word breathed of them by any. Frailty, thy name is Woman, & so on, but I would have expected their novelty to persist a month or so.

* * *

12th August

Drank sherry with Salcomb and happened to mention this swift smothering of feminine avidity (☝).

‘Why, sir,’ he replies, ‘I dare say they have seen ‘em!’

‘Oh?’ says I. ‘I had thought that a complexion somewhat beaten—even a missing part—formed a portion of the allure.’

‘Depends which part,’ the good magistrate said, clearly without first thinking of his interloc., and looked abashed. ‘Sorry, Rector.’

I waved it away: I do not know which vexes me more, being unable to laugh at loose talk, or the terrible sheepish expressions of men who believe me truly scandalized by it.

‘It goes something beyond the thousand natural shocks. I take it they were not at home when you called?’

‘Indeed, as that phrase is commonly used.’

‘You’ll see soon enough. But though they are both very hideous, a sensible woman might overlook that. But they stumble and slur before luncheon, which only a silly one would. So, you see, the constituency is instantly reduced to nil.’

Then they are very much in need of my—whatever I can offer them. Resolve to renew siege tomorrow.

* * *

13th August

I have never before set foot inside The Limes. It was built about forty years ago, in a provincial iteration of the high style, by a man named Jeffries, who had grown rich in the manufactory of gloves. Jeffries died at a great age, his younger widow in time remarried and removed to her new husband’s county, and the sons of his first marriage, by then well-established in their own professions in London, elected to let the house rather than return. But there has been no tenant since I was appointed here. Though comfortable enough, it is very unfashionable, with its faded sprigs, stripes and gilt, pale pink and duck-egg green, and tenants of means no doubt prefer something in the more hearty and colourful manner of our own times. The effects of two bachelors would in any event appear incongruous in such surroundings, and since the stowing of these is yet incomplete, with many little heaps of objects in passages and corners, the impression of disharmony is doubled. As I was led by the lugubrious butler to the drawing-room, one of these small cairns tripped up my heels, and the man turned upon me with a look that recalled nothing so much as the engraving of the hissing Mongoose in my Goldsmith.

‘Mind your feet, sir,’ he said in a kindly mutter at odds with the minatory glare. ‘If they do come back, we want ‘em to know the offerings are sincere.’

I could make nothing of this, and yet I am sure I did not mishear.

Hideous is not quite the word I should use of Captain Bowe-Lyon, though certainly he is no maiden’s prayer. He is something over six foot, would have a fine physique did he take exercise and eat well, but I would judge does neither, so wasted and with a small paunch, wears his brown hair long though it is much receded and thinning, eyes grey and very beady, clean-shaven, poor complexion deeply scored with vertical creases down the cheeks, which were hollowed and the lips shrunk by the loss of most of his teeth. Yet behind the wreck one may just see, as if a lantern projected it upon a wrinkled cloth, the handsome, high-spirited, arrogant grace that animated him at one-and-twenty, and furthermore there is something gentle and courteous in the prematurely aged countenance. A studious, plain, sentimental girl might be very susceptible to that, I thought, though the notion did not long persist after the entrance of Capt. Rawdon.

I run ahead of myself, for Capt. Rawdon did not enter until after four o’clock, and in the meantime Capt. Bowe-Lyon told tales, some of which were marred less than others by indistinct speech and want of memory, not just for the essentials of his narrative, but for names, places, and even common words, whereupon he resorted to queer substitutions: ‘sea-god’ for ‘ship’s dog’, ‘vizard’ for ‘face’, ‘barricade’ when he meant, it seemed, some kind of crate or packing-case. This was, in truth, extremely tedious, so much I wished myself back with the chancel repair account, but in my company he could consume no stimulant but tea, which interval of sobriety could do him at least no harm, and but for his distress when his powers of recall failed him, he seemed to be enjoying himself, and often broke into a hoarse laugh, which gave me the cue to do the same, a few seconds belated, like an imperfect actor.

After a small eternity came a voice from the doorway behind me. ‘James!’ it exclaimed, very cracked and harsh, with the astonishing contorted vowels of Ulster. ‘How long have you been pinning this poor man down?’

The radiance that lighted the vizard before me burned away, as winter sun does morning mist, the tender-hearted, virtuous, dull wraith-bride I had conjured for the younger captain. He had gained a felicity as close to conjugal as he would have in earthly life, though it would take one that shared the disposition to masculine amity to see it. ~~I should have known when I heard them set to the other day.~~

‘Francis,’ he murmured rapturously. ‘You’re up!’

‘What?’ the other bellowed.

He moved into my field of vision. Here Salcomb’s casual adjective was juster, and yet not wholly just. Tall also, he is more squarely made than his companion, and moves with the jerky vigour of intellect and irascibility. One senses he has borne hardship better than his younger mate from being in a worser kind to begin with: their complexions equally ravaged, Rawdon’s has no shadow of fresh clarity behind it, their jaws both sunk, but Rawdon’s was never more than a jowl. He has lost nearly all his hair, I should judge (it was cropped under a silk cap), but in profusion it could only have been rusty brush, which also dots his chin. His pale blue eyes bulge from their sockets in perpetual, general horror, as at the folly of mankind. His left hand is missing, and the stump horridly active, as he clamps objects to his breast with it, or employs it as a prop to the other, whole member, when that trembles uncontrollably. He wore on this occasion, carpet slippers, no stockings, sailor’s ‘slops’ and a short velvet robe de chambre, indescribably stained. He brought with him the stale breath of the sickroom.

Said Bowe-Lyon, ‘This is the Rector, Francis. Mr—Mr—Mr—’ He looked stricken.

‘I can see that,’ snapped Rawdon, glaring at my reversed collar and frock coat.

‘Amies,’ I interposed, rising as Bowe-Lyon sank back and in his relief shrieked, ‘Mr Frend!’

So touched was I at his triumph that I had hardly heart to set him straight, yet it was the sort of mistake that it is no kindness to leave uncorrected. ‘How do you do, sir? Richard Amies.’

He took my hand in a cracked, cold grip and chuckled. ‘We have kept you too long, Mr Amies.’

I thanked God for my release, but there came more from the craggy, near-immobile lips. ‘And so the laws of hospitality, in all their rational majesty, require we hold onto you for another few hours. Will you dine with us?’

‘No!’ I declared, startled out of even nursery manners by the sudden impression of a stone Silenus come to odd, Socratic life. I added thanks, and some incoherent words about already having instructed my housekeeper.

‘Good,’ he said, dropping my hand. ‘You wouldn’t like it. Plain food, no wine.’ And indeed, though his breath was not sweet, there was no hint of drink upon it. ‘We do not, as you see, enjoy good health,’ he continued.

It would be insult, not succour, to attempt to deny this, so I said, ‘Dr Farringdon, in Colebridge, is a very good man.’

‘Does he know anything about hives?’

Bowe-Lyon mumbled his friend’s Christian name in gentle reproof.

‘I do not take your meaning, sir. He doesn’t keep bees.’

Rawdon creaked like a backstay, and he said this, I will set it down as well as I remember it.

‘Boils, Mr Amies, lesions, rashes, pimples, pustules, pox. These are hives, in the dialect of my boyhood. A lady once said to me, she said Francis—we were close—she said, the Church of England brings you out in hives, and I wondered for a moment, stupidly, where a well-bred English gentlewoman had picked up this rustic Ulster Scotch word, until I realized she had it from me. If you go where you are not meant to be, step out of your quarantine, you spread contagion. Civilized tongues blistered by rude language, that is but one form of it, and a mild dose. To bring the sickness we are pleased to call civilization where only rude health should be—well, that is eternally damnable. Seamen have the reputation of evoking damnation and eternity casually: be assured I do nothing of the kind.’

I was utterly confounded by this homily, and remain so. He has, I can only say, a strong sense of personal and general depravity, and at that I should not be much surprised, since even the Established Church in Ireland is considerably ‘lower’ than her English sister, and perhaps the man was, or has become, some species of Non-Conformist. But there was something else, something—I know not what.

I stammered, ‘I am no enthusiast, sir.’ (Perhaps this was not tactful.) ‘I would not seek to obtrude my ministry where it is not required.’

Bowe-Lyon must have, unobserved by either of us, pulled the bell-rope, because the butler materialized in the doorway, like the rescuing hero in a melodrama.

‘It’s good to see the Captain on his feet,’ he said, as he shewed me to the door, clarifying, with a stutter, ’Captain C—aptain Rawdon. He is a remarkable man.’

With this sentiment I could truthfully and heartily agree, and did so.

‘The other Captain is a fine man, and a good one, who has been through a lot, but he is not remarkable. Captain Rawdon is remarkable.’

He let me out into the sultry summer evening, and I shivered to remember how the pallid and dainty furnishing of the drawing-room, so ridiculously ill-assorted with its rugged inmates, lent even this warm yellow light a polar chill.

* * *

22nd September

Never before had I missed Mrs Parrott’s preening and laborious enquiry after the wellbeing of ‘your sister, Lady Darsie, and Sir Archibald Darsie of Birrenswork,’ but I should have welcomed it in place of her greeting this afternoon, which was to shriek, ‘The Captains have digged up the park that was laid out by the pupil of Capability Brown's pupil, it is full of holes and trenches and blinds! What will Mr Jeffries say? When little Adam Gates cut through at the bottom wicket, which he always does over from the mill, meaning no harm, he fell into one of their pits and was there until nightfall with his collarbone broke—’

It was all I could do to contain the news I had gleaned from Admiral Gerard concerning these persons, but I did so, and said with a wry smile, ‘Why, the weather was exceeding clement, and the fishing excellent, bagged several trout in excess of 10lb, tremendous eating, the Laird continues to improve his rugged acres. Lady Darsie is in fine health for one who will be brought to bed in six weeks or so, and Miss Darsie, that only babbled and ran behind nurse’s skirts when I was last in Scotland, is a young lady that can carry on quite a conversation with uncle Dick.’

Hardly chastened, she said, ‘Sorry, Mr Amies. Your holiday was very refreshing, I’m sure. But they’ve turned the locality topside t’otherway, I could wish them at the dev—’

Here did I make a very distinct noise of interdiction, and remind her that she is a Christian woman and of the law concerning trespass.

‘Yes, sir,’ said she. ‘Will you be wanting anything else, sir?’ investing these seven words with the profoundest anathema of the Mechanical upon the Gentlemanly estate. Later, however, she came back into my study and begged me to call upon The Limes once more, to see if their ruined relations with the district could not be patched.

This I had not meant to do. It scarce befits one whose life should be spent in imitatio Christi to wash his hands, and in accordance with the example of Our Lord it follows that there is no-one with whom it is improper for a clergyman to associate. And yet we declaim at our peril against the Prejudices that govern civil society: greater and more antient minds than our own formed ‘em for the augmentation of our private stock of reason. The opprobrium that pertains to acts of imposture protects our property and our wellbeing; the penitent fraudster might be forgiven, but it would be folly again to trust him, wicked even, to place temptation in his way. And as for the impenitent—! Here I realize I run ahead, and must set down, as a clear and continuous narrative, what I gathered from my talks with Admiral Gerard.

He is a first cousin of the Laird’s mother’s bosom companion, a man of about seventy years, in fine health—‘livin’ upon a yellow Admiral’s half-pay you eat spare and often go on foot’—and shewing no sign of decay of any mental faculty. He occupies his days in Scotland with the long walks and country sports that he cannot enjoy in London, and all his literature is the London Gazette and the Navy List. Such it was that secured Britannia’s mastery of the Waves! However, even by the high standard of retired half-pay naval officers, one could hardly find a man better informed on current despatches, the workings of the Admiralty, the tedious progression of post-captains towards flag-rank &c.

‘Rawstorne?’ he bellowed, upon my introducing a certain name to the conversation (he is ‘somdel deef’, the result of the assiduous gunnery practice for which, he says with pride, he made all his ships notorious.) ‘Dull dog, one of those very elderly lieutenants that never got preferment, though I think—yes, he had command of Agincourt on harbour service, best place for him.’

I repeated myself, drawing the attention of his kinswoman and the dowager Lady Darsie in the Rock-garden thirty yards distant, and realizing that discretion in my researches was going to be somewhat of a challenge.

‘—oh. Can’t say I—no, I do. He was third of the Phoebe. Warm little action off Valpariaso in ’14. Took the Americans’ Essex…no, Lord no, belay that. Poor Charley Rawdon’s dead, and I’m sure he had no brother, or anything of that sort, in the Service.’

I made attempt on the other name, which provoked a burst of laughter which I am sure was not meant to be unkind.

‘Someone’s pullin’ your tail, Vicar.’ 

‘How so?’ says I, feeling foolish.

‘Well,’ he replies, as one speaking to a very small and stupid boy, or a Frenchman, ‘Bowe-Lyon, sounds a bit like ‘bow line’, what? And yet, yet, yet—there is Bythesea, of Arrogant—one of our finest young men, let me tell you the tale—’

Here he interposed a most convoluted account of Russian couriers and ambushes in the Baltic, from which (I remember not how) I was able once more to steer (& reef!) him to the matter at hand. Like enough, he said, the men were merchant captains whose loyal people had got into the habit of addressing them as aboard ship, would be mortified to know a false impression had been given and magnified by gossips, especially if they were quiet-living bachelors, preferring their own company (here he winkt) to the petticoat hurley-burley of drawing rooms and assemblies &c.

It was true that neither man had ever made any claim as to naval, or any other sort of rank: they went not out in society, received callers only when they could not avoid ‘em, left cards upon no-one—but no, broken and half-intelligible as they were, Bowe-Lyon’s stories presumed the listener would understand him a senior officer in Her Majesty’s Navy. I said as much, offering as example the one about the isle of guano.

This had upon the good old Admiral a most singular effect. His ruddy and weathered complexion turned quite wan, the corners of his mouth drooped in mingled dismay and—I would not say fear of so stout an oaken heart, but consternation I could not deny—and soundlessly he agitated his lower jaw so that he resembled very greatly an unprepossessing beast of the deep. I was not disposed to be amused by the similitude, indeed was troubled by it all the afternoon. He pretended his cousin was waving to him, and bid me a very hasty good day, but that night at dinner after the ladies had withdrawn he came and sat beside me and apologized for his conduct. As explanation he offered only that the anecdote of which I had spoken was known to him, indeed was very notoriously circulated, its original teller a man of uncommon ability and courage who had been lost in terrible circumstances, and it gave him distress to think of another going about the country passing it off as his own. I agreed that this was poor ton, and there the subject was firmly closed.

So much for Admiral Gerard.

* * *

25th September

Morning brings Catchpole over from Westbridge: he is free of his turbulent squire—Harry Marlow was found dead of an apoplexy in his chamber on Friday, and he has just buried him. The eldest son, Nicholas, reacting no doubt against paternal idiosyncrasy, is a mild and unexceptionable churchman. Poor Catchpole, he was locked, like Jacob with the angel, in struggle with his glee and relief, but in relaxation his fine-drawn features become exceeding comely. We prayed together; I like him very much. I hope I may see much more of him now he has not Harry Marlow’s Enthusiastic meddling to counter at every turn.

And the afternoon post, an invitation to dine at the Limes (!!!) My impulse at first was to decline, but reviewing my intelligence on the household, I can think of no good reason to plead another engagement. Neither gentleman has made, in propria persona, any claim that could not be explained by Admiral Gerard’s first thought—that they were civilian captains addressed so out of habit by their servants—and it is very possible that, between the heat and stupor of an August afternoon and Bowe-Lyon’s fractured diction, I missed some indication that the stories he told were not all his own. Which of us, in any case, has not expropriated some anecdota—to lend them vigour and immediacy merely, not always to be tediously saying, ‘my friend N.’—and where the matter is neutral, or to the raconteur’s disadvantage, surely the imposture is very venial? It occurs to me also that two mariners, one on Her Majesty’s Service, one on some commercial venture, might independently discover a berg composed of bird ~~sh~~ excrements, there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, and especially upon the ocean. I rebuke myself how I have allowed the appearance of eccentricity and the superstitious recoil of a simple good old salt to disconcert me. It is a most expeditious opportunity to do what Mrs Parrott has begged, to open a more cordial relation on behalf of the neighbours without conspicuousness upon my part, and sure the gentlemen themselves seem to have belatedly seen the value in becoming sociable—oh, but I do hope they have procured some palatable wines!

* * *

10th October

what have I done

what have we all done

11 P.M. I pick up this journal once more, thinking I can make no progress with Sunday’s sermon nor indeed know rest at all until I have written out the astonishing occurrences of last night. Salcomb called this morning but I was out upon the glebe farm; on the back of his card Salcomb had scrawled in pencil, ‘Was it a dream after all?’—reassurance given with one hand and snatched with the other, indeed!

Including our hosts, we were a party of ten. Salcomb and his lady, Farringdon the physician, his wife and daughter (a fluttering, precious, faded creature that at nine-and-twenty years is still sometimes dismayingly nudged in my direction, despite being generally felt to have surmounted the crest of marriageability), that forceful antient widow Mrs Culver, of Monks’ Culvery, and her niece Mrs Vickers, who stays with her aunt while her husband is abroad upon business. I sighed inwardly at learning this good lady’s name, for its potential to aggravate Bowe-Lyon’s verbal debility and embarrass us all three. Had I known what would follow I should not have wasted my suspirations on such a triviality.

On making my way to the drawing room, I perceived that the piles of objects that in the summer I had assumed the residues of recent removal were still there, but someone had seen fit to cover them with tarpaulins. On some of them rested a canister, for what purpose I could not imagine, and the major-domo’s heavy look and swift step much discouraged enquiry. The majority of the party preceded me; the Salcombs were announced just as I had made the round of greetings and introductions. Our hosts were dressed with propriety, tho’ their coloured weskits look quaint even in our provincial company, and seemed in better health, perhaps simply from having their hair combed and their neckcloths tied. Bowe-Lyon in particular seemed in spirits; he relishes society as his companion merely tolerates it. There was but one moment of aukwardness before we went in, and I daresay but for hindsight I should have forgotten it.

Bowe-Lyon was enquiring of Mrs Culver about that relique at Monk’s Culvery, the Dovecote erected in the reign of the first Edward, when Miss Farringdon says in her small and girlish voice, ‘Sure Mrs Culver will think me very silly and fanciful, but when my and mama’s walks take me past Dovecote Pleasance, I always shiver to see it, such a curious edifice, like the ice-cave of the Esquimaux—’ here Bowe-Lyon drew himself back, and the hard creases of his face deepened much, but she regarded it not, and continued, ‘so imperturbable upon the outside, and inside filled with so many feather-clothèd spirits!’

Mrs Culver indeed looked upon this manifestation of sensibility with disapprobation, and every trace of affability had departed the captain’s face, that was as white as his boiled shirt and his knuckles closed around the mantel-shelf.

Says I, thinking to mitigate the inexplicably grim mood, ’Well, my dear, naturally I cannot countenance that there be more than one Ghost in such habiliment, but is it not so, Mrs Culver, that your Dovecote shares with the Igloë of the Esquimaux a very remarkable property of the regulation of temperature, with neither an excessive heat nor an unclement chill—’

‘I think,’ says Bowe-Lyon, lifting his lip in a precarious sort of snarl, ‘we want no talk of frigid spirits in the drawing-room.’

‘No indeed,’ I returned jocularly, ‘it is coming to the season when we should enjoy them mulled.’

He looked down upon me, his deep-set eyes half-moons, and I saw that they were red-rimmed and brimming. He made some excuse to the ladies about the fire smoking, though it did no such thing, and excused himself.

I took in Miss Farringdon, who grip’d my arm tighter than was needful, and looked around her, as if she expected a bear to burst through the sprigged and Chinoiseried walls. On my other side on the round table sat Mrs Vickers, and to her left Rawdon.

As I began the repast by drinking some clear soup, I first perceived a very curious omission from the table setting through the murmurs of the other diners—and indeed, there were no forks upon the table, nor any to be had for asking of the servants, which pantomime our hosts permitted to continue for some moments. Unworthily, I wondered if a man who lacked a left hand sought somehow to reproduce the affliction among his guests by depriving them of the implement custom places in that member, and catching Farringdon’s eye, knew he thought the same, before Rawdon’s voice broke harshly upon us, saying, ‘All the forks I had perished—they were—consumed some years ago, and in such circumstances as I could find no stomach to replace them. Your hands are clean, and though mine are not, the d—ned spot, the bloody—’

Miss Farringdon squeaked at what she fancied an oath.

‘Francis,’ said Bowe-Lyon good-naturedly, ‘you are reinforcing every prejudice these good people have about our kind. Miss Bowdler, I do apologize for my friend’s unrestrained—’

The young lady remonstrated, ‘I beg pardon, sir, my name is—’

But at that moment Mrs Salcomb deduced the reason for the interchange of the right name with one so little similar to it, and threw back her head laughing. The butler, who stood by her with a decanter of claret, looked agonized at the sound, which was, I own, one richer and more guttural than might be expected to proceed from a lady usually so proper and reserved as she, but we were all a little on edge, and Rawdon said, soothing but yet penetrating, ‘I know, I know, Thomas, poor fellow, you are dismissed—madam, please—’

Nervous laughter being the hardest of all to suppress, Mrs Salcomb gave a great whoop, in which she was joined by the susceptible titters of Miss Farringdon, a baffled gurgle from that young lady’s ‘mama’, and a wheezing, nervous chortle from Mrs Vickers. Only Mrs Culver seemed immune to the feminine contagion. At this the butler positively shrieked, flung up his hands to cover his ears, and the decanter, an old and fragile one, exploded into flinders on the boards.

‘My late husband’s grandfather,’ Mrs Culver announced into the profound silence following such a mishap, that the vulgar patrons of public houses do naturally fill with cheers and applause, ‘for whom he was named Sacheverell, most heartily deprecated the fork as a piece of effeminacy. His godfather was the Sacheverell, you know, Rector, the fellow who started the riots with his sermon, wherein the Riot Act was first used. And the fowling-piece. He couldn’t abide a fowling-piece.’

Bowe-Lyon, having instructed another servant to clear the broken glass, clutched at this with a remark about the antipathy of the common sailor to eating with forks, and so, one more oddity duly ascribed to nautical custom, we attempted another course of dishes. We were not unprovided with napkins and finger-bowls, and there was plenty of good wine to supply the four gentlemen who drank it (Rawdon taking none) and Mrs Culver, and so supervened a sort of hilarious comradeship, such as settles upon those aware that they chart a passage through social territory not accounted for by the usual forms. It was with relief that we came alongside and grappled the Figgy-Dowdy, for tho’ glutinous, it could be attacked with spoons alone. Tho’ ’tis generally accounted poor form for the conversation, in such a small gathering, to break up into twos and threes, here I could not regret it. Mrs Vickers proved agreeable and well-informed, having travelled much with her husband, a contractor to the Company, and only her having been too close to confinement when he last embarqued kept her in England now. We spoke of the rite of the Juggernaut in Puri, she saying that it was a spectacle not of fearsome prostration or bloody sacrifice, but of festivity and bravado, in danger something alike to the bull-running that our rustic grandfathers engaged in, and is practised still in Navarre, or the foot-ball games played in the Public Schools.

Then Salcomb, in his squirish way, understandably a little flown with wine, called down the table, ‘Rector, perhaps you can settle a dispute between the good doctor and me. He says that the spot where Jacob saw the ladder must be where Jerusalem was founded, bein’ the gate to heaven and whatnot, but don’t Scripture say it was Bethlehem—I could wager my dear old Zillah (his best-beloved mare) upon it—’

I hesitated, as confronted with an ignorance near-complete, the amateur scholar often must: he is brought up short to recognize how shallow he has supped of the Pierian Spring (or Siloa’s brook, if that delight thee more!) and cannot lay out clearly for the untaught mind, those discourses he thought himself a master of.

Says I, ’It is my pleasure, gentlemen, to declare that no-one need lose his mount—’

Bowe-Lyon’s voice quite overrode mine, which, never weak, is strengthened by daily exercise—I could at that moment quite vividly hear him roaring down the lower gun-deck about the unconscionable quantity of duty owed for grimy fingernails and frayed collars. Any among us who expected perhaps some jocularity about companionways, was rudely startled.

‘I have been there,’ he pronounced. ‘It is an awful place. Of fire and ice and air but no nutritive earth. Some John, some jackanapes goes down into the pit, and arose as the Nephilim, that brought terror on the land of the living—’

‘James!’ Rawdon looked not up, glowering still into his glass of seltzer-water as if it might do him some personal injury, and his brogue made the warning sound harsh indeed, yet I fancied I heard affection’s sweet note in it.

It silenced Bowe-Lyon long enough to allow Mrs Salcomb’s eye to meet Mrs Culver’s, and they rose.

‘I should apologize,’ said Bowe-Lyon in gallant confusion as we gentlemen rearranged ourselves, ‘I seem to have alarmed your ladies.’

‘No,’ replied Farringdon with chirurgical brutality, ‘you just made rather a show of yourself.’

For a moment Bowe-Lyon looked as if he might stand upon his honour, which in him looks as if he were posing for his photograph, but Rawdon raised his head, and his friend relented into a humility so frank it stole my very breath. ‘Yes,’ he grinned, and even the sight of his gapped mouth could not mitigate the attractive impression, ‘wasn’t I an utter ass?’

As the port went around Rawdon murmured to me, ‘He was telling the truth, with nothing of exaggeration in it, Mr Amies, and I too—well, I overheard Mrs Vickers speak of that Hindoo Lord of the Universe, and I believe in him, for I drew his chariot once, ten thousand miles distant from the Bay of Bengal.’ He sipped at his cloudy beverage, and gave it a look of dislike, whereupon I knew his temperance originated in addiction, and not some Ulster-Scotch kirk. ‘What paltry human material he chooses for his possession,’ he added, jolting his stump against the edge of the table in a gesture that I was obscurely horrified to recognise as the handless equivalent of nervous drumming of the fingers. Anticipating my likely response, which I daresay was indeed a platitude, he went on, ‘I do not mean that in the Christian sense that we are all unworthy of the grace of God. I mean some men are a good deal more paltry than others, and the evil powers of this world find them paradoxically sturdy vessels.’

I cited the letter to the Ephesians, vi:12, and said that to have seen those principalities and come away whole—here I blanched for my want of tact, but he smiled very sardonically and said no, if he were were to place the being that took away his hand, it should be among the angelic orders and not the diabolic. I burned with curiosity, but felt it an intrusion intolerable to ask more, and he was not forthcoming.

We joined the ladies, and that was when everything truly went to the devil.

Mrs Farringdon, whom I am coming to think as foolish a woman as her husband is a man of sense, proposed a charade, but Bowe-Lyon said alas, they had nothing of which to make costumes, and a charade was nothing without costumes, did we not agree? He suggested instead we play at Twenty Questions. We wrote the names of persons, living and dead, upon slips of paper, about a half-dozen each, and placed them in my hat to draw, and at first it was diversion enough. It took but five to find out Mrs Salcomb as Lord Palmerston, and to discover Farringdon as the Duchess of Marlborough fourteen (one forfeit, so that he wore his daughter’s lace cap dangling over one ear, and she his tailcoat around her bony bare shoulders). Mrs Vickers took such rich pleasure from my revelation (17) as the Countess Báthory that I suspected it was one of her own entries I had pluckt, and then that mischievous lady was John Knox (11).

Salcomb was next. I asked him, ‘Are you alive?’

He looked down at the slip in his hand and up again. ‘No. Yes. I—I—confess I don’t know.’

‘That is a forfeit, I believe. What shall it be, ladies?’

Miss Farringdon produced a ribbon from her pocket. ’He shall spend the rest of his turn tied to someone who shares the initial letter of one his Christian names.’ (Her facility in this office indeed shews forth the multiplicity of the Master’s talents, that there is none quite ungifted therewith.)

As the necessary information was volunteered to those newly acquainted, Rawdon solemnly extended his right wrist, that terminates in a hand, thank goodness, though very much with the expression of a man who expected to be made symmetrical again. And it could be none other, for Salcomb is George Frederick, and none of us else had a G or an F to our name. And with them standing yok’d in the middle of the room we resumed, to find that Salcomb’s person was a man, a Briton, not a soldier or clergyman, not a Member of Parliament though he had held office under her Majesty, that he was a naval officer, that he was not First Sea Lord. I noticed that Rawdon had arranged himself so that he faced away from his friend, consequently nor could I see his face well, but as the questioning persisted no sensible creature could fail to see his discomfort in bondage. His eyes were lowered and his pocked complexion seamy with sweat; his posture slouched and yet so still that one might fancy that the air about him became palpable, as mist. Salcomb perceived it, but fearing, I supposed, to be thought a poor sport, ploughed gamesomely on. Bowe-Lyon looked as if he had been drawn by a gifted draughtsman in an abstracted moment of tension: composed only of hard vertical and horizontal lines, yet exquisitely expressive of some undisclosed pain. It had got to, I think, that our man was employed upon the Discovery Service, that he was neither Sir James Clark Ross nor his uncle, before Farringdon leapt up, dislodging the cap, which he caught in a deft and sensitive hand. In his shirt sleeves he seemed as if, unsure of his competency, he were about to undertake some hazardous operation in circumstances far from ideal.

‘Ah!’ he exclaimed, ‘ah—’ and glanced rapidly from side to side, his kindliness having compelled him to social rescue before his good, blunt mind had conceived an excuse. ‘Let us give over, it is nearly half past ten, and did not you, Amelia, promise our hosts some music ere we should take our leave?’

Desperate indeed! Even Miss Farringdon herself looked startled, being accustomed to no such encouragement for musical talents which might prompt even the most indulgent auditor to aver, like the beleaguered gentleman in Miss Austen’s novel, you have delighted us long enough.

‘Are you sure, Father? I’m not in practice.’ But she rose, and handed him back his coat.

‘Nonsense!’ he said. ‘Give us that pretty madrigal, then you need no accompaniment, just a note, which even I can play.’ He hurried to the piano.

As we all resettled ourselves, Mrs Culver, who detests music, boomed out, ‘George, at least satisfy our curiosity: who was it you were?’

Salcomb had just released the bond tying him to Rawdon, and was on, as they say, the back foot. He muttered a name.

‘Speak up for a deaf old woman, George.’

Rawdon’s milky eye upon him, that caught and reflected the firelight, was terrible, but folding the ribbon, Salcomb perceived it not, and said, in unthinking exasperation and at the volume he uses upon the bench, ‘Sir John—Sir John Franklin.’

‘What a macabre suggestion,’ she said with rich satisfaction, ‘especially in the light of those ghoulish allegations by that wretched Scotch surgeon.’

Rawdon made a sound like Jason, my father’s bull at home, and like that irascible animal looked as if he might put down his head and charge. Bowe-Lyon drew himself up and said, ‘Madam, if you refer to doctor—doctor—doctor—Long, Dr Stride—no—no, no, Francis, what—God—what is his—’

His mouth moved in agony, opening like a chasm in ice, and he gulped a nonsense syllable, like, ugloo, ugloo.

‘Never mind it, James,’ Rawdon said, restored to gentleness by the sight of his friend’s distress, though giving Mrs Culver a very ugly look, to which that stout lady was quite impervious, being at her most content when the room is three-quarters turned against her. ‘Let’s listen to the girl.’

We turned to Miss Farringdon, who began, not quite upon the note given her—

> The silver swan, that living has no note,  
>  When death approached, unlocked her silent—

She got no further.

As a small boy I was somewhat susceptible of tears, and until I caught the knack of suppressing them, much mocked and jibed at for it. A whipping often ended the flood, for physical pain supplied the distraction necessary to its repression, but the birch could not, as it were, inoculate, for I welcomed rather than feared its propensity to end my shame. It is many years since I have had occasion to weep, and yet so early and firmly was the notion fixed that Amies is a blubber that I am always surprised—and, I must shamefacedly confess, relieved—when it is another, and not me, who is moved to the abject display. And so when Bowe-Lyon began to sob, great hiccoughs like damp canvas catching the wind, for moments together I could not believe it. He must, I thought, have been taken with a sudden chill, or perhaps an hysterical laugh (for though ‘twould be unchivalrous so to do, Miss Farringdon was making a more lamentable hash of Mr Gibbons’ poor dead swan than ever had been served up before). Just as I came to accept the evidence of my senses, Rawdon spoke.

‘Stop,’ he said, repeating the word until it swelled and filled the room. Then he stood, went to his friend and clasped his head against his bosom, caressing his lank hair with a heavy stroke. ‘Please leave us.’

Mrs Culver snorted contemptuously, which Mrs Salcomb and Mrs Farringdon tried to cover with scuffles, mutters and genteel throat-clearings, amplified in a masculine register by their husbands, that all proved quite unequal to smother the old woman’s imprecations upon unmanly sensibility, that recalled to her the follies of young gentlemen in her own salad days &c., that she thought were quite thrown o’er fifty or more years ago. Miss Farringdon sank, a little too picturesquely, against the curve of the piano to the floor, her face in her hands.

I perceived that there was perhaps one thing of utility that I could do, and rose to pull the bell-rope, but in even that Mrs Vickers had anticipated me.

We set sedulously then to the business of social recuperation—I wonder how grave a breach of custom must be, that Englishmen and women will not react to it by pretending it has not happened, certainly blows may be exchanged, death may occur, but perhaps not both together, homicide may indeed be the bar. We spoke of the hour, smugly deprecating the rusticity of our habits in calling for carriages at eleven, of what a delightful time we had spent with charming new acquaintance, how very amusing it was to hear our Rector answer ‘yes’ to the question ‘Do you bathe in the blood of maidens?’ Miss Farringdon was helped from the puddle of crinoline petticoat into which she had sunk herself, and just as it seemed likewise perhaps that our esprit de corps might stagger to its feet and home to a respectable bed, Rawdon spoke again.

‘I shall not ask why you torment us, nor plead that we have suffered enough, because no earthly suffering is sufficient to the evil thereof—to say that nothing you could muster is equal to the tortures we daily inflict upon ourselves comes close, but is not to the purpose—no, no, what I want to ask is what do you know of us, how do you know it—’

God forgive me, I told him. My patience had been tested by their eccentricity and inhospitality, but it was the glum grandiosity of his manner, the self-satisfied pessimism, that broke it. Not, I dare say, entirely eschewing pomposity myself, I laid out everything I had learned from Admiral Gerard. I flinch from recording my misplaced indignation here, where only I might read it, yet in last night’s company I shrank not from flinging out terms of the utmost opprobrium: ‘fraud’, ‘deception’, ‘lies’—all these words, I fear, passed my lips: I waxed upon the dignity of the civilian estate, that is only made shameful by envious pretension of arms (oh, how I blush! more than blush, as I recall it I wish to ‘crine,’ as the quaint Scotch word has it, and slip betwixt a crack in the floorboards) waning only when I felt the hot glare of nine faces—for even Bowe-Lyon had put his from out of his friend’s bosom, and queer indeed its hard contours looked when blubbered—nine astonished faces upon mine.

‘Are you quite finished, Mr Amies?’ enquired Rawdon, with a fearsome courtesy, that in being hard to acquire outside a wardroom, gave me to falter in my righteousness.

I agreed that I was.

‘In our common law a man’s name is his by use and repute, and as it happens I have had this one since my birth, though it is true it was not the one best known to strangers, the which is so besmirched that it is not worthy of defence; our age’s deprecation of affairs of honour and your cloth preserve you nothing so much as that. Would I were the poltroon you would have me: many good men who are dead would be living still, and a land that can bring only bitterness and woe to civilized man under the stewardship of those savages who know best how to inhabit it. I wish heartily we lived in a world where your account was true, and not in the one we do, which is not le meilleur des mondes possibles.’ (His French accent is vile) ‘However, James is innocent of all crime. You will apologize to him, and then I hope we shall never see you more.’

‘I’m not, Francis, I’m not,’ Bowe-Lyon sobbed, overcome once more. What he said then sounded like ‘roast meat, roast beef,’ but it was mostly lost into his handkercher.

I said, ‘I am sorry. I seem to have been misinformed,’ (this I reflect, is not true—before God, I must own that some base resentment possessed my imagination and allowed me to weave an unsavoury tale) ‘and I retract my words in their entirety.’

I think there was nothing unmanly in this admission, but to have to make it in front of the leading persons in the parish was an humiliation that I will bear as long as I reside here, perhaps as long as I live. And yet how insufficient it seemed, under the sorrowing eyes of two men who, I am coming to understand, have borne more than the human constitution can or should be able to support, oh, men that I now recognize I would fain have called friends! Their contempt is gall and wormwood to me, but swallow it I must.

I dread to sleep—or rather to wake, and lie for a moment in drowsy contentment, that is coldly dashed with the remembrance that I have foregone the society of extraordinary and admirable people through my own sanctimonious folly. I can only say with the publican, and smite my breast, God be merciful to me a sinner.

* * *

11th October

My night was broken, haunted by elusive dreams of a place where the light was gelid and blue-grey, dotted however with pools of sickly lamplight, and eerie creaks and screams broke an uncanny silence. ~~I think it was hell~~. I am as a consequence low in spirit, yet not indeed so low as I had feared when I completed last night’s entry. I thank God for the resilience with which he, by his grace, invests poor human souls. As a means of drawing a line under the whole sorry business, I append this note, received in the morning post. Alas! how I wish the new-fangled mail that brought its antique phrasing to my hand had sped a few hours earlier along Mr Brunel’s celebrated 7-foot gauge track!

“The Grapes”, Villiers Street

9th October 1856

Dear Sir,

Forgive a letter short and to the point: nothing in my course of Life has inclined me to waste paper in attempting eloquent Composition. That enquiry you made in Dumfriesshire in the Summer concerning the two Captains new come to live in your Parish has worried at me like a very Terrier, & more I confess to obtain rest for myself than intelligence for you, I made some Researches. I have found out who they are. Tho’ they go under assumed names they are not imposters. It is a very astonishing story, and you will convict me doubtless of the Sailor’s Vice—I mean, Sir, Tall Tale Telling! but of its entire Truth I assure you. Of concern for the privacy of the two Gentlemen, who have good reason to wish to remain obscure, I do not set it down exhaustively here, as an Hostage given unto Fortune, but if you ever find yourself here in the Liberty of the Savoy, I keep a permanent room at the “Grapes” & shall spin you the whole Yarn. I pray you, if you do none else: treat them with gentleness, & do not sermonize ‘em too hard. They have suffered more than you or I can comprehend.

I am, Sir, your dutiful & obedient servant, & unfeign'd Friend,

—HORACE GERARD

**Author's Note:**

> Bowe-Lyon: the historical James Fitzjames published (appalling) verse under the pseudonym Tom Bowline.
> 
> Goldsmith: Oliver Goldsmith, _A History of the Earth and Animated Nature_ (1774).
> 
> Juggernaut: to different extents, all the characters here are repeating racist and imperialist solecisms about the worship of Jagannath, and the chariot festival associated with the deity. 
> 
> Ephesians vi:12: 'For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.'
> 
> 'that wretched Scotch surgeon': John Rae, who reported that the Franklin expedition had ended in cannibalism, to the severe detriment of his own reputation. Fitzjames can remember only his Inuktitut name.
> 
> To save my blushes, readers may attribute any historical howlers to this fic existing in, essentially, an AU of an AU of our nineteenth century.


End file.
